Bennett's Bow-Out Puts Spotlight on Bush Cabinet Shifts

Article excerpt

THE Bush administration's lineup is going through some jarring
mid-term adjustments for the coming political season.

Hard-charging William Bennett, rough-edged and ready for battle
on the field of political ideas, has left the Bush team for the
second time in as many months. On Thursday he withdrew his
acceptance of the president's offer to make him Republican Party
chairman.

Mr. Bennett, who left his post as the administration's drug czar
a few weeks earlier, was a key new player in a more aggressive and
confrontational Republican strategy that was to take hold when the
new Congress is seated in January.

His stated reason: Ethics rules would bar him from outside work,
particularly from fulfilling two book contracts he has negotiated.

Few Washingtonians have accepted that explanation. Even in White
House corridors, notes one aide, "Nobody knows what to make of it."

Speculation runs to a clash of personalities with White House
chief of staff John Sununu. A Capitol Hill Republican staff member
observes: "Bennett showed extraordinary independence in those two
weeks." Many conservatives many suspect that Mr. Sununu decided he
could not control Bennett or keep him from intruding on policy
questions, the aide says.

As one measure of Bennett's value to the GOP, Democrats were
relieved to see him go. Bennett, says Will Marshall, president of
the Progressive Policy Institute, a Democratic think tank, "is one
of the best practitioners of cultural politics in the Republican
Party." He knew how to jab the "soft underbelly" of the fragile
Democratic coalition of blacks and wage-earning whites, Mr. Marshall
says.

Already, Bennett had drawn some lightning for defending
commercials used in North Carolina Sen. Jesse Helms's reelection
campaign; the ads attacked racial quotas. Democrats, most of whom
also denounce quotas, have called the commercials thinly veiled
efforts at race-baiting. Bennett called it a valid subject for
political debate and looked forward to raising the issue further.

Most speculation about Bush administration resignations in recent
weeks has centered on Sununu himself and budget director Richard
Darman, the power center at the White House during its first two
years. …